Entertainment

Music Services Compared: Pandora, Spotify, Slacker and iHeartRadio

Pandora Radio, Spotify, iHeartRadio and Slacker Radio are in a tight race for your music dollar. All have evolved beyond their origins, offering more flexibility and additional features for your listening pleasure. Which to pick? See all four of these online music services compared here.

While Pandora holds the line as a pure music discovery service, our three other contenders offer additional services. For instance, Slacker and iHeartRadio have live-streaming terrestrial radio stations, and Spotify offers an enormous music library and the ability to share playlists.

Pandora has by far the biggest user base (65.6 million), while Slacker trails with only 4 million. But Slacker — which launched a redesign on Wednesday, boasts hand-picked song matches instead of those based on an algorithm. Not to mention it has nearly 10 times the number of songs Pandora has in its library.

Then there's Spotify, eight years younger than Pandora. It has the largest song library of the whole group (20 million) and still brings in an impressive 20 million users.

In the competitive market of online music streaming and discovery apps, which service will win this hotly contested battle? That's hard to say at this point, but the biggest winners in this competition will be music listeners.

Which one is the best? It depends on features what you're looking for, such as custom radio stations, paid tiers and song selection. Take a look at the table below, and you'll get a good idea of what's offered by each service, and then you can compare them directly with each other.

Let us know in the comments which music service you think is the best, and why.

Pandora vs. Spotify vs. Slacker vs. iHeartRadio

Pandora

Spotify

Slacker

iHeartRadio

Monthly Unique Users

65.6 million

20 million

4 million

48 million

Launched

2000

2008

2007

2008

Type

Discovery

Discovery/on-demand

Discovery/on-demand

Discovery/live radio streaming

Create Custom Stations?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Free version available

Yes: limited skips, ads, reduced quality

Yes: ads, limited listening time

Yes: ads, limited skipping

Yes: fifteen combined skips per day, six per hour per station

Paid Tiers

PandoraOne: $36/year or $3.99/month

$4.99/mo. for desktop & laptop, no ads. $9.99/month lets you use all devices, no ads

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.